Even Before, I Knew
by Lexee99
Summary: Embry Call, resident outcast, had always been in love with his old childhood friend, Juliet Fuller, reservation princess. Especially after she punches Collin Littlesea's mother in the face. (Coming Soon)


" _We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin." - Andre Berthiaume_

 **Introduction**

Juliet Fuller had felt as if she had lived a full life by the time she was sixteen. Her mother had died early on in giving birth to her little brother and sister, Brady and Sadie, who were three years younger than her. This sad and unfortunate situation had led her to quite a bit of money. Not only from her surprising inheritance, but because her father also threw himself into his work, making money and never once spending it - he left that to his eldest daughter.

Juliet liked to pretend that she spent a lot of that money because everyone on the reservation knew she had it. For awhile she pretended that she was a vivacious party girl like her friend Carmen. That she didn't scour thrift shops in all the surrounding areas for designer brands, or that she didn't buy her makeup at the dollar store. She pretended that she didn't spend every waking minute calculating in her head how much it was going to cost for both Brady and Sadie to go to Washington State without scholarship (to be safe), in addition to feeding and clothing them for the next five years and having a safe emergency fall back account for the next ten years in case they didn't make it through school or someone had a medical emergency.

However, because everyone knew she had money, she had to also factor in generous donations in her father's name to the Quileute community. His name was going to be erected above the school library soon, and many people crooned to her about how generous he was, and what a beautiful little family she had.

Juliet was an expert in how to be a self actualized, beautiful, perfect, happy teenager. At the age of thirteen she began to read a new self help or "how-to" book every week, cutting out the unhelpful world of fiction immediately. She followed the mothering books carefully, adapting them to the new situations that came with raising preteens. Doing the best she could while portraying herself to be the happy and fun teenager to the outside world, she cut the crust off sandwiches, scrubbed the floor when Brady and Collin tracked dirt into the house, and brushed the brambles out of Sadie's long hair as she listened to her middle school drama.

She did this because she had not always been the best at taking care of them. There was a time when she herself acted like a kid, she played in the mud and got into trouble with the neighbor boy. A time when she never worried about money or what she looked like to anyone else.

Until the day before her thirteenth birthday, when her father had decided he had had enough of life without his wife. He made arrangements for the three of his children to go live with a relative in Virginia, and then attempted suicide that night.

For Juliet, it was the worst night of her life. She was the one who found her father, passed out in the car, not waking up, even when she screamed his name. She quickly called the police and her father was transferred to Forks Hospital. That was the first time Juliet realized how expensive medical care was. It was also the first time she had to hold two young crying children under her arms, comforting them, when she was just a scared twelve year old herself. In this moment the heavy weight of blame blanketed all the Fuller children.

Because they lived on a large piece of land farther northwest of the reservation, there was only one house close by that was rented out on their property. It was all luck that this house was uninhabited for the week, as the Call's were visiting family on the Makah reservation.

It was an optimal situation really, considering the circumstances. Her father recovered with a minimal brain injury, went back to work, and no one ever knew what had happened. They never went to stay with that relative in Virginia. Most importantly though, the image of her beautiful, perfect, and wealthy family stayed intact in everyone on the reservation's minds; except her own.

Maybe that was the biggest thing she pretended never happened. Of course, other than the fact that daily she pretended that she had her life together, or that she hadn't been absolutely in love with her best friend when she broke his heart to pieces.

xxx

So Embry Call had this thing, right. There wasn't many outsiders on the Quileute Reservation, as you actually had to be Native American (preferably Quileute) to live there. In fact, no one at his school _wasn't_ Quileute, except for him. This lead to not many people appreciating his presence on the reservation.

Not only that, but he didn't exactly know who his father was. Like, at all. Which wasn't so bad, because a lot of people on the reservation had divorced parents or not so great dads. But the thing was that everyone knew _who_ their dad was. And everyone knew that Embry _didn't_ know who his was. When he was younger, people made fun of him for having his mother's last name, as if that made him more girly or something, like it wasn't also his grandfather's.

Luckily, around the third grade Jacob Black took mercy on him for some odd reason and let him play with him at recess. It seemed even a surprise to Jacob that the two boys had hit it off. Now deemed worthy, Jacob introduced him to his best friend Quil, and the rest was history, the three of them were inseparable.

Embry also had one other friend. An older friend, a girl. She was an "at-home" friend though. She was in a different grade, one above him, so they never had recess at the same time. Embry and his mother lived in a small house on her father's land, renting it out. This girl would visit him often, and they'd run around outside and pull the clothes off the line and build forts with them. In those forts she liked to kiss him a lot. Each day she'd giggle and say that means they had to get married. At first he didn't like it. He didn't want to be tied down to this crazy girl. But by the time she turned twelve and him eleven she had stopped kissing him and he missed it. When he asked her why, she said it was inappropriate for them to do so, and it wasn't cute anymore because she was getting older. Embry had to ask his mom what inappropriate meant.

Embry didn't like getting older. Getting older meant more homework, more bullies, more responsibility, and less Juliet.

In fact, the day after Juliet turned thirteen she blamed getting older as the reason she didn't want to talk to him anymore. She calmly explained to him that it was hurting her reputation to be seen with a younger and immature boy. Everyone thought they were dating, and as a thirteen year old in middle school, that just wasn't acceptable.

At first Embry didn't understand. He wanted to be her friend, she had always wanted to be his friend, why couldn't they hang out with each other anymore?

When he tried to talk to her at school Juliet ignored him. Until finally Carmen Keane laughed in his face and told him that Juliet didn't want to be seen with poor bastards. All the while, Juliet just stood there, avoiding his eyes and not saying anything.

Embry had enough sense not to ask his mother what that word meant. It was middle school, and he caught on very quickly.


End file.
